Indiana Black Expo’s Summer Celebration is over. And contrary to what many people predicted — or at least feared — there was no unspeakable act of violence in the middle of Downtown.

Unsupervised teens didn’t brawl outside of Steak ‘n Shake or Circle Centre Mall. Gang members didn’t have a shootout along the Downtown Canal. Parents didn’t have to grab their kids and dodge stray bullets.

Instead, for the third year in a row, Expo organizers, police and an army of volunteers mostly kept the peace. I say “mostly” because one teenager was shot by accident in a Downtown parking garage in the wee hours of Sunday morning. But in general, Summer Celebration was so peaceful that it was almost shocking.

On Friday night, after the O’Jays finished their set at the annual free concert, people picked up their coolers and chairs and quickly vacated the American Legion Mall. Some people even left early. On Saturday night, the same thing happened after the Jill Scott concert at Banker’s Life Fieldhouse. The streets were empty — not just of people there for Summer Celebration and the after-parties, but of everyone else. Last weekend was not normal in terms of foot traffic. Downtown was a ghost town with blocked-off streets.

This is both good and bad. The violence of Summer Celebration is mercifully gone, but so is the vibrancy. What’s more, the event is sucking the vibrancy out of Downtown. And that’s sad.

It’s also understandable.

Most people in Central Indiana are keenly aware that there have been a lot of shootings this summer, mostly young black men targeting other young black men in the urban core of Indianapolis.

Summer Celebration, of course, draws a lot of young black men into Downtown. And so, with dismay, I noticed closed patios at restaurants that normally go out of their way to welcome patrons during a big event. Instead of “come on in,” the message I felt most of the weekend was “go away.”

The fear of potential violence has taken root in Indianapolis. But is that fear justified?

Quite a few people would say yes. Both locally and nationally, they argue, blacks commit the most violent crimes. It isn’t about race, they say. It’s about facts. And the facts show that young black men are dangerous. That they are “thugs.”

But what about the young black men who aren’t dangerous and who aren’t “thugs”? They do exist. And plenty of them were Downtown last weekend.

Too often in this city and in this country we assume that because, statistically, young black males commit most of the homicides, that all young black males will commit homicide. We treat innocent people like criminals, even when they have done nothing wrong — other than using slang, listening to rap, wearing clothes that are in style, and generally being obnoxious teenagers and young adults.

Imagine what it must feel like to go Downtown with your friends for Summer Celebration and see closed patios that are open any other Friday and Saturday night. Imagine what it must feel like to know that no matter what you do in life, you’ll always be treated like a “thug” because people think you look like one.

“Animals,” one older black man grumbled to me during the free concert on Friday. “That’s the way they like to treat us.”

How can we as a community demand that our young black males act like the upstanding, compassionate, responsible human beings that they should be, and then treat them as if they’re likely to shoot up the place at any moment?

I say all this not to excuse the crime that’s going on in the black community here and elsewhere. I want to scream and cry each time I hear about another shooting. The violence is absolutely ridiculous and there is absolutely no excuse for it.

Like a lot of people, I wish I knew of a simple solution to make the shootings stop. But I don’t.

What I do know is that treating all young black men as creatures to be feared isn’t a solution. All it does is further the us-versus-them line of thinking that prevents us from getting a handle on the real scope of the problem, and then solving it.

I understand being afraid. I really do. But let’s not let our outsized fears get the best of us.